Track's proposed eligibility, transgender rules would completely ban Semenya and others

Track and field moved toward adopting rules that would place athletes assigned female at birth but have higher testosterone levels, like Caster Semenya, under the same set of rules as transgender athletes who were born male and transitioned to female.

World Athletics, which in 2023 banned transgender athletes who had transitioned male to female and gone through male puberty, announced recommendations Monday that would apply strict transgender rules to people like Semenya, who was born female but has what the organization describes as naturally occurring testosterone levels in the typical male range.

Previously, athletes like Semenya with differences in sex development (DSD) had to undergo testosterone-suppression therapy for two years to be eligible. Now they may be ineligible regardless of whether they've done hormone therapy.

The new rules would also eliminate exceptions into the female category for any transgender athlete who hasn't gone through male puberty. No such athletes currently compete at the highest elite levels of track.

The recommendations propose reinstating a version of chromosome testing that was discontinued in the 1990s, requiring athletes who compete in the female category to submit to a cheek swab or dry blood-spot test for the presence of a gene that indicates whether the athlete has a "Y" chromosome present in males.

In 2023, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said new DSD regulations could impact up to 13 current high-level runners; that number is believed to be even smaller now. It includes Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters who has taken the argument to the highest court in sports and the European Court of Human Rights.

How the new guidelines might impact Semenya's protests